The Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation today announced the 2014 winners of the Physics Frontiers Prizes and New Horizons in Physics Prizes. The prizes recognize transformative achievements in the field of fundamental physics and aim to provide recipients with more freedom and opportunity to pursue future accomplishments.

The laureates of the 2014 Physics Frontiers Prize are:

Joseph Polchinski, KITP/University of California, Santa Barbara, for his contributions in many areas of quantum field theory and string theory. His discovery of D-branes has given new insights into string theory and quantum gravity, with consequences including the AdS/CFT correspondence.

Michael B. Green, University of Cambridge, and John H. Schwarz, California Institute of Technology, for opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification of forces.

Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa, Harvard University, for numerous deep and groundbreaking contributions to quantum field theory, quantum gravity, string theory and geometry. Their joint statistical derivation of the Bekenstein-Hawking area-entropy relation unified the laws of thermodynamics with the laws of black hole dynamics and revealed the holographic nature of quantum spacetime.

Laureates of the 2014 Frontiers Prize now become nominees for the 2014 Fundamental Physics Prize. Those who do not win it will each receive $300,000 and will automatically be re-nominated for the next 5 years.

Shiraz Naval Minwalla, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, for his pioneering contributions to the study of string theory and quantum field theory; and in particular his work on the connection between the equations of fluid dynamics and Albert Einstein’s equations of general relativity.

Vyacheslav Rychkov, CERN/Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University, for developing new techniques in conformal field theory, reviving the conformal bootstrap program for constraining the spectrum of operators and the structure constants in 3D and 4D CFT’s.

The Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation established by the Milner Foundation and dedicated to advancing our knowledge of the Universe at the deepest level by awarding annual prizes for scientific breakthroughs, as well as communicating the excitement of fundamental physics to the public. According to the Foundation’s rules, laureates of all prizes are chosen by a Selection Committee, which is comprised of prior recipients of the Fundamental Physics Prize. The Selection Committee for the 2014 prizes included: